An incident I discuss took place in October 1946. Hubert Humphrey up to that point had greatly admired Wallace and at the 1944 national Democratic convention had led the Minnesota delegation in a demonstration for retaining Wallace as Roosevelt’s vice-president and, to the great irritation of the more regular Democrats in the MN delegation, had refused to shift to Truman even after Truman’s victory was clear. After FDR’s death, he wrote an emotional letter to Wallace regretting that Wallace was not in a position to assume the presidency. In September 1946 Truman filed Wallace for his criticism of Truman’s developing Cold War policies and in October Wallace made a nation-wide speaking tour, including an appearance in Minneapolis. At the airport then Mayor Humphrey officially welcomed Wallace and sought a meeting with him to discuss the political situation in Minnesota. That night Wallace met with Humphrey and a few of Humphrey’s close political aides. After Humphrey explained his increasing difficult relations with secret Communists operating in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, Wallace told Humphrey that he personally knew of only one Communist active in liberal politics, Lee Pressman of the CIO. Humphrey was taken aback by this because Wallace had ridden from the airport with a delegation of Minnesota Wallace supporters, including several well-known Communists (turning down Humphrey’s offer to escort Wallace to his hotel). Worse, however, Wallace then suggested that Humphrey privately approach Soviet officials and ask that they order their Minnesota subordinates to behave with greater discretion. Appalled by Wallace’s combination of naiveté and willingness to accept Soviet involvement in domestic American politics, Humphrey severed his ties with the man he once fervently hoped would be president of the United States.

One other incident confirms Wallace’s complete naiveté about the Communist control of his own movement in 1948. His good friend, C.B. “Beanie” Baldwin, whom he knew from New Deal days, became his top advisor and campaign manager. Baldwin, unbeknownst to Wallace, was a secret Communist Party member.

A congressman who was a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities wrote Wallace to inform him that he had information that the leaders of the Pennsylvania branch of the Progressive Party were both members of the CPUSA. Wallace responded that he asked Beanie Baldwin about this, and Baldwin told him it was not true — that the men were independent progressives. Baldwin, who had appointed these two Communists to the leadership of the movement in Philadelphia, lied to Wallace.

Had Henry A. Wallace become president in 1948, and had FDR let him stay on the ticket, Wallace would have proceeded to implement policies favorable to Stalin in Europe. There would have been no Marshall Plan, no NATO, and U.S. policy would have been to formally support the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, including approval of the Czech coup that put the Communists in power after the killing of Jan Masaryk.

As John L. Gaddis suggested, the future of the world would have been very different, since there would have been no Western opposition to Stalin’s expansion as he moved politically to create Communist regimes throughout Europe.

In repeating a mythical history of the Cold War from the Soviet perspective, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick continually misinform the American public about the real history of the Cold War. That the American media has featured them on virtually every major television and radio talk show — without any challenge to the analysis they offer — is more than a major disgrace.

It makes the talk show hosts who book them complicit in the spreading of lies about our own past, and hence does a great disserve to the public. It is bad enough that CBS has run their TV series on Showtime. To then allow them to spread their lies unopposed compounds the disgrace. Which will be the program brave enough to invite on anyone who can challenge the portrait of the Cold War painted by Stone and Kuznick? Even hosts like Joe Scarborough and Mike Huckabee have given their programs over to these dishonest and ill-informed would-be historians.

I have offered to appear with them in a debate, alongside someone like Prof. Wilson Miscamble of Notre Dame University (author of a serious book on the Cold War that proves how bad the history of Stone and Kuznick is and another book on the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan).

To date, Stone and Kuznick have not replied to the challenge. I think I know why. Both of them would not be able to handle real evidence and argument that challenges many of the assertions and so-called “indisputable facts” they present.

They are moral and mental cowards, willing only to appear on their own before hosts who do not know history, and before audiences of confirmed leftists who cheer them on.

It is time Showtime, CBS, and the programs that regularly book them on the air hear from those of us who are disgusted with their propaganda barrage and demand that others who hold a different perspective have the chance to counter their work.

36 Comments, 19 Threads

Between the huzzahs for Oliver Stone’s revisionist history and the Common Core Standards adopted by a large majority of the states, I don’t know what is more frightening to the writers and readers of reliable history, including readers of the history of literature. Ron Radosh has sounded the alarm on Stone, but here is another debacle that threatens to 1. decrease the English and American literature taught in the schools in favor of bureaucratic legalese; and 2. move literary criticism of the Greats away from “moderation” toward the most extreme Left, including ideas that would be agreeable to all proponents of the organic society. I sounded my own warning bell here: http://clarespark.com/2013/01/05/american-fascism-and-the-future-of-english-and-american-literature/.

The embrace of the Democrats of the historical Truman and JFK has had with it the potential to illustrate that the current Democratic Party is NOT their party. It was hijacked by the forces which ran Wallace for President in 1948. Today, the only thing the schools teach about the 1948 election is that “Dewey Beats Truman” headline. Nothing else.

The refusal of the Republicans to point this out is one of the reasons why they are unable maintain that they are actually quite centrist and it is the contemporary Democratic Party which has strayed from its roots. Based upon the recent election results, voters today really think that Obama is a middle-of-the-road Democrat. Truman would have disowned him, JFK would have disowned him. But the Stupid Party helps the Democrats keep that little secret.

I routinely watch C-SPAN’s Afterwords program, as well as much of what is on Book Tv on the weekends. This one I deliberately skipped. The reason was Oliver Stone. Why waste time on him?
Afterwords is supposed to be non-fiction authors interviewing other non-fiction authors about their work. This wasn’t.

It’s quite shocking to think Wallace was a vice-president, and might have even become president. With so many traitors and fools in high places it’s a miracle the US survived so far, let alone become a superpower.

People like Stone and Kuznick seem obsessed with rewriting history, or distorting it beyond recognition. One asks why they would want to do this on behalf of a moral squalor like the former Soviet Union? The simple answer is they hate the US so much they want any device, tool, weapon they can lay their hands on to bash it with. The second question is why they have this deep, abiding need to persuade people to think about the US the way they do? The answer to this question is even simpler: they are intellectually insane. It seems that many people have this condition, otherwise loons like Stone, Kuznick, a frighteningly large number of American academics, and usual leftist journalists would be seen for what they are. Unfortunately, intellectual insanity on the left is the scourge of the planet. The good news it’s a disease confined largely to the left.

“Confined largely to the left” I don’t think so. I saw some of Stone’s swill on SHO recently and was left slack-jawed. This is the sort of totally over-the-top bizarro propaganda that would have gotten him laughed out of the office twenty years ago. Now, it’s getting prime-time Showtime imprimatur and its director and author are getting the triumphal publicity tour. Like Al Gore, they can afford to ignore their opponents. Their side OWNS the debate forum. Soon enough, the school kiddies will be forced to watch their swill on class time.

We can debate their personal motives till we’re blue-in-the-face. I think it’s merely because they were raised to think this way from birth. U.S.A. and capitalism–bad. U.S.S.R. (or any enemy of America) and socialism–good. I was exposed to this sort of thinking in my youth as well. It doesn’t go any deeper than that.

Jonah Goldberg in his “Liberal Fascism” was right when he said most liberals have no idea of the sinister roots and disgusting progenitors and non-sensical philosophical basis of their cherished ideals, they’ve just been raised and trained this way and been told that being a liberal is hip and cool and compassionate.

The Dark Side is EASIER. As Master Yoda might have said, all you have to do is embrace a certain set of beliefs and you are automatically conferred a halo of compassion and intellectual superiority. You don’t actually have to study or learn or defend a damn thing. Just mouth the correct rhetoric and you’re all set. Everything you say is right and any personal sin you commit can be laughed off or dialectically explained away. Furthermore, saying or writing the wrong thing in public can nowadays get you in social trouble or legal jeopardy or blight your school or job prospects. Best to keep your mouth shut and go along even if you don’t agree. Just go with the flow and no-one gets hurt.

This is the mini-series Oliver Stone would liked to have put out decades ago. He knew he just had to be patient.

People like Stone and Kuznick seem obsessed with rewriting history, or distorting it beyond recognition. One asks why they would want to do this on behalf of a moral squalor like the former Soviet Union?

I can’t help but wonder if their “alternate history” is inspired by an overwhelming bitterness at the Left having lost the Cold War. Now that the Left is in power in the United States and the darling of the media, they can go ahead and rewrite history to prove themselves morally and politically correct, at least retroactively.

With the almost total ignorance of history among the young, there is almost no one to challenge their version of events. Most kids could show their parents their textbooks and their parents would be unable to detect the errors although perhaps their grandparents or great-grandparents could do so.

I’m deeply greatful to Prof. Radosh for speaking out about this and wish him every success in his effort to debate Stone and Kuznick. I’m not holding my breath on the mainstream media giving him that forum though. I also doubt that Stone and Kuznick will accept the challenge. They know that the media will not pressure them to defend themselves against Prof. Radosh or someone of similar credentials and that will leave their narrative unchallenged. Stone and Kuznick are probably wise enough to recognize that their blarney will propagate effortlessly in the absence of vocal criticism.

I anticipate the Stone series being the video equivalent of Howard Zinn’s history text, widely touted as being the definitive history of the United States in the latter part of the 20th Century. Both, of course, are utter rubbish in terms of accuracy but that is insignificant since they are filled to the brim with “truthiness”.

In the Vassiliev Papers, the KGB files that Alexander Vassiliev copied and brought from Moscow to London, an entry appears in the Vassiliev notebooks dated February 10, 1945. An NKGB agent — Washington D.C. station chief Anatoly Gorsky — reported to NKGB head Lavrenti P. Beria that he was enclosing a telegram from the intelligence agency’s station chief in Washington, D.C. about the station chief’s future meeting with Henry A. Wallace, which would take place on Oct. 24, 1945.

Wrong date. Further on the article quotes:

“To Comrade L.P. Beria” “I am enclosing a telegram from the NKGB USSR station chief in Washington regarding his meeting with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wallace.” (Molotov’s decision: “Cde. Merkulov! This should be sent to Cde. Stalin without fail. Molotov. 2.10.45.” Vadim had been introduced to Wallace (the former Vice President) previously. Wallace called him personally and invited him to breakfast at the Dept. of Commerce, which took place on 24.10.45.

That would be October 2, 1945, not Feb 10,1945, to be consistent with “24.10.1945,” where the month comes before the day.
A common sense approach would also state that it is very unlikely that one would plan in February for a meeting in October: two weeks is more likely than 8 months in advance.

Those who would look to Henry Wallace’s view in the Cold War in the 1940s ignore the change in his point of view as a result of the Korean War. As a result of the Korean War, Henry Wallace abandoned his previous benign view of the Soviet Union.

Another terrific piece by Ron Radosh. But what is really astonishing to me is how supposedly respectable historians like Martin Sherwin, Michael Kazin and Douglas Brinkley can put their critical abilities in cold storage and praise Stone and Kuznik’s confabulations and delusions. I just don’t get what animates them other than their leftist pretensions. It certainly can’t be that they don’t know the history of the Cold War or Soviet policies in Eastern Europe or Soviet intentions of undermining governments in the West, as Radosh seems to imply if I read him rightly. One doesn’t have to be a Cold War scholar deeply familiar with its literature to realize that the Soviet Union was an expansionist totalitarian state that could not be assuaged but could only be confronted and contained, precisely the policies pursued by Truman and his successors. If these historians celebrating Stone and Kuznik still have any doubts what Stalinism meant — hard to believe, though — they should read Anne Applebaum’s latest book on Soviet control of Eastern Europe and what that would have portended for Western Europe had Wallace been president. But perhaps those historians don’t care and are only moved by the corrosive anti-Americanism that still seems to permeate many of their 1960s generation. How else can one rationally explain their willingness to lend their good names to a work of such obvious ideological propaganda?

Free speech gives Mr. Stone and Mr. Kuznick the right to lie as loudly and as often as they like. Free speech also gives historians in high academic positions who live high off the public dole the right to discredit themselves and their institutions as well as dishonor their profession.

Free speech also gives Mr. Radosh the opportunity to let the truth demolish everything standing in its way just like Thomas Jefferson said it would.

Would be nice if Radosh would actually demonstrate the evidence that Gaddis used to prove that Wallace was “regularly reporting to the Kremlin in 1945 and 1946.” This is such an over-the-top accusation that it demands documentation. Does Radosh really think that the sitting Secretary of Commerce was a Soviet spy? Gaddis is the myth maker here.

Simplicity itself is the badge we flash whenever the taint of Communism appears- What we have yet to learn but the “intelligences” on all sides know very well is that nothing quite deceives like a document. Henry Wallace would have led us down a dark path; the whole world would have been worst for it – baloney. Just because good people were taken with or deceived by the “communist line” doesn’t mean that the outcome would have been inevitable. What makes any of us so sure that our national security state was/is the answer? After defeating the Nazis, we sided with them. We hired them, used them and in the end they themselves were “corrupted” by inept “intelligences” that we paid for at what horrible price. Our weakness was we didn’t have faith enough in our own democracy – and, sad to tell, we still don’t. The Bogeyman is good for business; Fear is the primary lever – thats the history of the cold war.

I think Wallace would have been historically great for this nation. Race-relations, corporate structure and our appearance to other nations would have been greatly improved at an earlier time had he not been railroaded. Same for JFK.

Turning the world upside down. And then turning that upside down world upside down again, and again. Plowing up, undermining, the soil on which NEW seeds are to be sown.

The Seeds of the “DREAMS From The Fathers”. But Whose fathers? Which fathers? Which seeds?

To satisfy the myth requires destruction. The murder of the father and his seed. By a man from outside the kingdom of the Father – the putative “son” of the father.

The seed in full flower gave HOPE to millions of people world wide to CHANGE their lives for the better. HOPE satisfied over more than two centuries for disparate peoples from the entire world. At times at great cost in treasury and blood of those who cherished THAT promise.

That soil to be plowed under – UNDERMINED – to make way for THEIR seeds. Seeds producing flowers KNOWN to be toxic to aspirations of men wherever they’ve grown. In any of the New Worlds created by those called by a number of names Leftists. Why Left?

The rush – why the rush? to CHANGE that Old World Dream into one consistent with the DREAMS of self-appointed, self-propagating, incestuous wizards who as in those most dangerous words in the language, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help”. Help which requires the destruction of the seed and fruits of the Founders, of the Fathers.

What is a promise to “fundamentally transform” the creation of those Fathers but a promise of destruction of that creation? Left? Right? Independent? the words exist and have meaning outside the political arena and the person who says them.

To “transform” the seed of the double helix of the DNA of these United States of America: The Declaration of Independence with the protection of that independence as spelled out in detail in the Constitution of the United States of America is the goal, for whatever personal psychopathy of Wizards of Destruction.

These documents that detail a DREAM of human aspiration in freedom from self important control freaks ought not have a sell-by-date. And should not be readily exchanged by a rational and enlightenec self-interested population for the blowing in tbe wind promises of politicians. ANY politician.